I will ask for an urgent meeting with the colleagues from the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy to address the issue on the new requirements for posting of drivers performing international road haulage operations. Such a commitment took caretaker Minister of Transport, Information Technologyand Communications Hristo Alexiev during today's meeting with representatives of the professional organizations in the field of carriage of goods.
Under the new requirements to any driver, performing international road haulage operations, should be paid remuneration according to the minimum requirements in the countries to which the driver carries out courses. According to the industry, this would repeatedly raise its costs and create major difficulties in accounting for hours worked out by the drivers in each country and in the payment of their salaries. This would make the Bulgarian transport sector uncompetitive as regards to the European markets.
During the talks the industry stated that it suffered heavy losses because of the slow passage through the border-crossing points. In this regard, it asked for assistance the caretaker Minister to put this issue to the responsible institutions. Hristo Alexiev assured the hauliers that he will do everything within its powers and abilities and will ask the responsible authorities to make the necessary organization to prevent the gathering of heavy vehicles at the border.
During the day wa held a meeting with bus carriers at which was decided to be established a working group with the participation of the industry, Executive Agency "Road Transport Administration" and representatives of the Association of Municipalities in Republic of Bulgaria to amend Regulation 2. The main requests of the bus carriers it is to harmonize the criteria that lay down municipalities regarding the conduct of public procurement for awarding transportation of passengers.
Today were also held talks with representatives of the taxi industry and of the training centers for training of drivers.
Many of the problems raised by the taxi industry were within the competence of the municipal administrations, so caretaker Minister Hristo Alexiev said that he will notify Sofia Municipality and the Association of Municipalities on its requests. He asked the representatives of the industry to summarize all problems that can be solved by the Ministry in short term.
During the talks with the representatives of the training centers caretaker Minister Hristo Alexiev said he has ordered acceleration of the activities of the Working group on the amendment of training documentation. He urged the industry to be more active and to work quickly but competently in order to achieve a good result regarding this issue.
